Distribution of NWG/RFC's through the NIC
Organizing how RFC notes would be distributed through the Network Information Center.
Crocker, S., "Distribution of NWG/RFC's through the NIC", RFC 95, DOI 10.17487/RFC0095, February 1971, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc95>.
@misc{rfc95,
series = {Request for Comments},
number = 95,
howpublished = {RFC 95},
publisher = {RFC Editor},
doi = {10.17487/RFC0095},
url = {https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc95},
author = {S. Crocker},
title = {{Distribution of NWG/RFC's through the NIC}},
pagetotal = 5,
year = 1971,
month = feb,
} RFC text
Contents
NIC 5731
Network Working Group Steve Crocker
Request for Comments: 95 UCLA
4 February 1971
Distribution of NWG/RFCs Through the NIC
Notice
The Network Information Center (NIC), administered by Doug Engelbart
at SRI, has established (or is establishing) lines of communication
with all of the sites. The mechanism is for each site to have a
Station Agent and a Technical Liaison Contact. The Station Agent
maintains a small library of documents which arrive from the NIC.
The Technical Liaison Contact matches requests from the network
community to people or services at his site, and vice versa.
In my opinion, the current mailing list for the Network Working Group
seems to duplicate in large part the NIC's distribution system.
Therefore, I am making the following changes.
(1) Each site is presumed to have a Technical Liaison Contact. Where
none has been appointed, the current receiver of NWG notes for that
site will be assumed to be the Technical Liaison Contact. (Each
site may change its Technical Liaison Contact by notifying the
NIC.)
(2) NWG notes will be sent only to Technical Liaison Contacts and to
those on the current mailing list who are not at a site.
(3) RFC numbers and NIC numbers will continue to be assigned by Jeanne
North at SRI -- (415) 326-6200, ext. 4119, or use Enterprise
numbers:
BB&N, CASE, HARV, LINC, MAC, CCA Enterprise 0740
ARPA, MITR Enterprise 1-0740
CMU Enterprise 9074
ILL Enterprise 1074
SDC, RAND, UCLA, UCSB, UTAH Zenith 9-0740
(4) NWG notes may be sent to the NIC for distribution, or may be
distributed directly. If an author intends to distribute an NWG
note himself, he should so inform Mrs. North and obtain any changes
to the mailing list. All mailing should be airmail or first class,
depending upon distance.
Those on the current mailing list who are not at sites are
Alfred Cocanower MERIT
MERIT Computer Network (313) 764-9423
611 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
Douglas McKay IBM
IBM Watson Research Center (914) 945-1159
P. O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, New York 10598
Thomas O'Sullivan Raytheon
Raytheon Data Systems (617) 762-6700
1415 Boston-Providence Turnpike ext. 2120
Norwood, Mass. 02062
Technical Liaison Contacts
John T. Melvin SRI-ARC
Stanford Research Institute (415) 326-6200
Augmentation Research Center ext. 4328
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, Calif. 94025
Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts ARPA
Advanced Research Projects Agency (202) 694-5921
1400 Wilson Boulevard (202) 694-5922
Arlington, Virginia 22209
Robert Kahn BBN
Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. (617) 491-1850
50 Moulton Street ext. 421
Cambridge, Mass. 02138
Dan Murphy BBN
Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. (617) 491-1850
50 Moulton Street ext. 351
Cambridge, Mass. 02138
John Barden CASE
Case Western Reserve University (216) 368-4467
Computing and Information Sciences
Room 222, Crawford Hall
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
Harold R. Van Zoeren CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University (412) 683-7000
Computer Science Department ext. 267
Schenley Park
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213
Richard Winter CCA
Computer Corporation of America (617) 491-5301
565 Technology Square
Cambridge, Mass. 02139
Robert Sundberg HARV
Harvard University (517) 495-4147
Aiken Computation Laboratory
33 Oxford Street
Cambridge, Mass. 02138
James Madden ILL
University of Illinois (217) 333-0395
Center for Advanced Computation
168 Engineering Research Laboratory
Urbana, Illinois 61801
Joel Winett (for the 360) LINC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (617) 862-5500
Lincoln Laboratory ext. 7474
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Mass. 02173
William Kantrowitz (for the TX-2) LINC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (617) 862-5500
Lincoln Laboratory ext. 7349
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Mass. 02173
Albert Vezza MAC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (617) 864-6900
Project MAC ext. 5877
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, Mass. 02139
David Wood MITRE
Mitre Corporation (703) 893-3500
Information Systems Dept., W140 ext. 2528
Westgate Research Park
McLean, Va. 22101
Thomas Lawrence RADC
Rome Air Development Center (ISIM) (315) 330-3857
Griffiss Air Force Base (315) 330-7834
Rome, New York 13440
John Heafner RAND
Rand Corporation (213) 393-0411
Computer Science Department ext. 7606
1700 Main Street
Santa Monica, Calif. 90406
Abe Landsberg SDC
System Development Corporation (213) 393-9411
2500 Colorado Avenue ext. 454 or 6119
Santa Monica, Calif. 90406
Michael Wilbur SRAI
Stanford Research Institute (415) 326-6200
Artificial Intelligence Group ext. 4576
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, Calif. 94025
James A. (Andy) Moorer SUAI
Stanford University (415) 321-2300
Computation Center, AI Project ext. 4971
Stanford, Calif. 94305
Edward A. Feigenbaum SUHP
Stanford University, Heuristic Programming (415) 321-2300
Computation Center, Serra Hall ext. 4878
Stanford, Calif. 94305
Ari Ollikainen UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles (213) 825-2381
Computer Science Department
3732 Boelter Hall
Los Angeles, Calif. 90024
Steve Crocker (for ARPA Office Liaison) UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles (213) 825-2368
Computer Science Department
3732 Boelter Hall
Los Angeles, Calif. 90024
James White UCSB
University of California at Santa Barbara (805) 961-2274
Computer Research Laboratory
Santa Barbara, Calif. 93106
Barry D. Wessler UTAH
University of Utah (801) 322-8378
Computer Science/IRL
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Author's Address
Steve Crocker
University of California at Los Angeles
Computer Science Department
3732 Boelter Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Phone: (213) 825-2368
[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
[ into the online RFC archives by Adam Costello 3/97 ]
AI ELI5
On this page
§1RFC Distribution Problem
By February 1971, the ARPA network had several sites, each with researchers developing network protocols. The Network Working Group (NWG) produced RFC notes, but they were distributed via an ad-hoc mailing list. Steve Crocker, the NWG Chair, observed that this overlapped significantly with the Network Information Center (NIC), which was being established at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) under Doug Engelbart's direction. The NIC had its own system for maintaining a library of network documents and coordinating with each site through designated Technical Liaison Contacts.
There were two systems for sending documents around the network. Crocker noticed they were doing the same job twice and decided to consolidate them.
§2New Distribution Procedures
Crocker's changes establish that each site must designate a Technical Liaison Contact (or the current RFC recipient becomes the contact by default). RFC notes would henceforth be sent only to these Technical Liaison Contacts and to people on the mailing list who are not based at any site. RFC and NIC numbers would continue to be assigned by Jeanne North at SRI. The document includes Enterprise telephone numbers for major sites (BBN, ARPA, CMU, etc.) through which sites could reach the NIC to make changes or coordinate on technical matters.
Each site picks one main contact person. RFCs go to that person instead of to a big mailing list. The site can change who that person is anytime by calling the NIC.
§3Establishing Formal Governance
This brief note is significant because it represents an early effort to formalize how the RFC process itself works. Rather than leaving distribution to chance, Crocker is establishing a systematic procedure with designated roles (Technical Liaison Contacts, Station Agents, the NIC). This administrative structure would eventually evolve into the RFC Editor role and formal RFC publication process that continues today. The document reflects the maturing nature of the ARPA network as it grew from an experimental project to a formal research infrastructure.
This sets up the first official job titles and procedures for how the RFC notes process works. It is the start of turning a casual system into an official one.